Hengilas
by Satellites on Parade
Summary: Black Canary volunteers to give the Team little "therapy" sessions following the events of Failsafe.  This is a more in-depth look at the therapy sessions from Disordered.
1. Wally

**I ****seriously**** think ****that **_**Disordered **_**should****'****ve**** just ****been**** therapy ****sessions ****and ****nothing ****else. ****I****'****m ****feebly ****trying ****to ****make ****that ****a ****reality ****by ****turning it into a fic****. ****Also, ****like ****20 ****people**** wanted**** me ****to ****do ****it, ****so ****here ****you ****go! ****This ****should ****be ****done ****by ****the end of the ****weekend.**

**Here we have Wally. Next is Kaldur.**

**Title comes from Jónsi song of the same name, which means "Padlock."**

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><p>"Man, when he does not grieve, hardly exists."<p>

— Antonio Porchia

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><p><strong>Stage One: Denial.<strong>

_A defense mechanism. The individual denies the reality of the situation and attempts to rationalize. Typically lasts only for a short time to prepare us for the onset of grief, but can linger for long periods of time in some cases. The individual will avoid discussing what has happened by changing the subject or denying allegations made toward how they feel._

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><p>"So," Black Canary muses, crossing her legs and interlacing her fingers pensively. "Wally."<p>

The noisily eating boy opposite her tosses a piece of popcorn into his mouth and crunches happily into it. Black Canary would be laughing at his lackadaisical upside-down position on the chair if this wasn't supposed to be a moment for seriousness.

"That's my name; don't wear it out," Wally ripostes, winking at her. A somewhat exasperated smile twitches over her cheeks.

She blinks, glancing at the bowl he's holding with one arm. It is filled to the brim with absurdly large pieces of popcorn, far larger than anything of the normal variety; he doesn't seem to be fazed, however.

She indicates the bowl with her chin, cocking an eyebrow.

"That's, uh... Those are kind of _big_, for pieces of popcorn," she observes hesitantly. Wally scarfs down another one and grins.

"Green Cheeks whipped it up. It's _enhanced_ popcorn." He pauses. "Not with Cobra Venom, of course, but pretty close."

Black Canary manages to crack a smile even in response to his uncharacteristically poor joke. She knows what he's doing – putting on jocularity, deflecting seriousness by playing the oblivious fool. It's a front, she knows. Wally West is hardly the carefree philanderer he attempts to be in the wake of disaster.

"It's good that M'gann is still cooking," she says helpfully, and Wally nods vigorously in agreement.

"Tell me about it! Then again, anything involving that babe is sure to be good, so I win all around." He gives her an indicative thumbs-up and continues shoveling popcorn into his mouth. Black Canary suspects he must have some sort of helpful mutation that allows his cheeks to hold so much food at once.

"Anything?" Black Canary asks softly, and she thinks she sees Wally's shoulders tense, but it isn't blatant, because his facial expression doesn't even flicker.

"Generally," he answers far too quickly. He pauses, and so does the eating, much to Black Canary's astonishment. "Look, I know why you dragged me in here. You want to make sure my brain's not all bonkers after the training thing. Five stages of grief, right? You're trying to see where I am. Okay. Shoot, hot stuff."

"You've got me pegged," Black Canary confesses with a light laugh (and it's a lie). "All right, then. Where do _you_think you are?"

"I think I'm fine," he replies earnestly, inspecting a particularly deformed kernel with vague interest, wriggling his feet pensively.

"Really?" Black Canary exclaims quietly, her skepticism ill-concealed.

Wally burps.

"Yep."

"That's good," Black Canary tells him, and she is lying straight through her teeth.

"Look," Wally states very frankly, flicking a dud off to the side. "The way I see it, none of what happened was real, so why freak out? I mean, sure, I was upset in there, but once I woke up and learned that it was all just – that I was just _imagining _the whole thing, it was fine. Why react to something that didn't really happen?"

"It did happen, Wally," Black Canary tells him gently. "What happened was real to _you_. It's real in some sense."

"Not really."

Black Canary frowns at the harshness of his response, the underlying claws of something equal to despair, and sighs.

"What happened in there," Wally starts to say, a bit too emphatically, "it was all just – it was an accident. It was all messed up. Everything that we all felt was practically implanted in us; it was all an extension of what M'gann was feeling. It just transferred over to us because we were sharing the same psycho-space, or whatever. M'gann's – reaction just accentuated our own."

"Do you blame her?" Black Canary inquires.

Wally shakes his head certainly.

"Totally not! It was totally understandable under the circumstances. Besides, I can't stay mad at that gorgeous—"

"Not _her_," Black Canary interrupts, treading lightly.

Wally's shoulders bunch up again, like unyielding rocks in a stream.

"Is Artemis a 'her?'" he jibes casually. "I hadn't noticed, but now that I think about it..."

Black Canary doesn't want to have to be the one asking the questions, dredging up the answers. But Wally, in all of his compulsory heedlessness, leaves her little choice.

She folds her hands and leans forward.

"I'm going to need you to at least tell me a little bit about your experience," she informs him with a feigned air of reluctance.

He sighs with a smile and raises one eyebrow at her.

"Only for you, babe," he says dramatically as if it's causing him great difficulty. "Only for you."

"You haven't talked about what it was like," she prods him. "Being on the mothership with Robin. How did you feel, knowing you were going to die?"

"I didn't _know_ that because it wasn't _real_."

"This is a hypothetical question, then. Answer it."

The firmness in her voice isn't cruel; it's calm and imploring. Wally seems to catch on to the somberness of her demand and exhales, letting his previously active feet go limp and his head loll back until his hair tickles the floor.

He closes his eyes.

"I felt..." he whispers. "I felt okay. Like, well, not _okay_. But... I don't know. I guess I had accepted it, or whatever."

"You weren't scared?" Canary asks. "You weren't sad? Just—"

"Figured that it wasn't the time to change anything. Figured we started this together and we'd end it together, you know?" Wally crosses his legs and hooks them over the back of the chair. "Yeah, I know what you're gonna ask. It didn't hurt. It was like I – it was like I existed and then I didn't. It was too... it was so easy. It shouldn't have been easy."

Black Canary opens her mouth to say something else, but he continues talking.

"I didn't have any regrets, or... _anything _like that. That's just how I roll. I live in the moment, because moments are all that matter, I guess. Especially then. Especially when—"

He stops himself, catches himself, does _something _to physically keep himself from proceeding, and his eyes snap open again. The freckles spray up as he beams.

"Ah, but you don't wanna hear about that!" he exclaims, almost too loudly, and swings back up onto the chair, this time slung across it contentedly. "This stuff's too heavy for a day like this. What d'you say we go out and enjoy this nice weather?"

Black Canary sighs and shakes her head, leaning back into her chair again.

"All of your friends were dying in front of you," she reminds him, and she feels just a little bit terrible, bringing this up to him. "How did that feel?"

"Why do you keep asking me how things felt?" Wally demands very suddenly, and Black Canary catches his eye, trying not to be taken aback by the sudden frigid sobriety in them. His face is blank; his hair seems more alight, more adamant, than ever before. "I didn't feel _anything_. It was all a simulation and like Batman said, we knew that going in, so—"

"Wally."

He halts at the sound of his name and blinks pensively at her, scratching his cheek with one finger. After a moment's consideration, he responds.

"I don't know. It wasn't so bad. I mean, they're all heroes. That's what heroes all eventually have to do, sacrifice themselves. They're dedicated to – to humanity." He pauses. "Heroes die because they have to. Because they want to, to protect everyone. Sidekicks don't do that. So I guess it – I guess something changed. I guess I knew that we were... that we'd, I don't know, grown up? Ugh, this is _stupid_."

He seems to consider what has just erupted from within him, looking almost surprised, as if he's having a hard time believing that the words are his. Black Canary waits, vigilant and patient.

"When Artemis," he swallows, and the rest of the sentence goes down with it. "I – we should've been there. I could've run over there and moved her out of the way, or M'gann could've stopped the ship, but none of us did anything but watch. We all failed."

Black Canary's forehead tightens.

"What's even the point of all this," Wally murmurs, eyes distant, voice peculiarly tight, "if we can't protect each other?"

Black Canary feels a disturbing urge to reach over and hug the kid, something that should've happened to him _and _the rest of the Team the moment they had woken up, but his next sentence stops her.

"Everyone... _sacrificed _themselves," he repeats. "Everyone except Artemis."

Her name is spat out from his mouth as if it is a rock that somehow found its way in there. Black Canary's eyebrows go up.

"Artemis didn't—?"

"No," Wally finishes for her, eyes wandering to the waterfall behind her. "She didn't die for anyone. She just _died_. It was just – it was her mistake. She screwed up because she was stupid. If she'd stuck around, then _maybe _she could've been some help, but..."

Black Canary wants to dispute what he says, but doesn't. She folds her arms and taps one heel on the floor a couple of times in thought, but Wally doesn't seem to want to finish his sentence.

"M'gann didn't have that luxury, either," Black Canary reminds him. He doesn't even blink.

"But she stuck with us," he mutters, glancing aside bitterly. "She was there. Artemis wasn't there because she screwed up." Under his breath, he repeats, "She wasn't _there_."

"You're angry at her," Black Canary states.

"No," Wally spits back, and his fist is pressed against his chin as he looks away.

"You are," Black Canary reiterates sternly, and Wally balks, eyes closed and teeth gritted, as if she has burned him. "You're angry at her because she left you all behind. You're angry because she—"

"I'm not going to talk about Artemis," Wally interjects breezily, as if they're discussing the weather. He shifts back into his earlier position on the chair, upside-down. Black Canary's eyes narrow. _Kid__ Flash _is back, cheeky and flirtatious and escapist. "If I do, I might lose my appetite. Can I leave?"

"No."

"But BC," Wally insists charmingly. "I've already made this... _tragically_ clear, as Aqualad would say. I'm one hundred percent fine. Beyond one hundred percent. As _x_ approaches infinity, I am _fine_."

"So you want me to believe that after everything you went through, including your own death from fiery explosion, you're peachy?" Black Canary summarizes cynically, giving him an incredulous look.

"I'm uh, fairly certain I never used the word 'peachy,'" Wally observes between bites. "But I think you got the gist."

"So," Black Canary presses him, caution long since carried off by the winds, bush beaten well around, "you really have no interest in confronting your extreme reaction to Artemis's death?"

Wally chokes violently on his popcorn, spasming up and practically falling out of the chair. He rights himself haphazardly, coughing until the obtrusive kernel has freed up his lungs once again, and he gives her this – she isn't quite sure how to describe it. This _look_.

It is almost resigned in nature – not quite _bitter_, not entirely melancholic... perhaps regretful, or yielding? She gets the sudden impression that Wally has aged by years, that he had realized something very recently that changed him, and though she knows precisely what causes him to look at her with such defeat, she says nothing.

The visage is gone, then, in an instant, and is replaced with a debauched grin.

"I'd rather talk about you, babe!" he declares suggestively.

"Wally," Black Canary says, and her voice suddenly sounds so _sad_. "You're in denial."

Without a moment's forethought, without the slightest amount of consideration, Wally reclines on the couch and replies with all the cheerfulness of a comedian, "I'm comfortable with that."


	2. Kaldur

**You may have noticed that we've reached stage three rather than stage two. This is because I think that Superboy is stage two, and since he upped and stormed off before his session could even start, we're going to have to save him until the end, when he comes back. Silly Supey!**

**This one was probably the hardest to write, because Kaldur, though I love him, is such a complex dude. I still feel like I didn't really do him justice, but... oh, well. C'est la vie. If I'd looked at this any longer my eyes would have fallen out.  
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**Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of or affiliation with Young Justice or the characters or situations therein. This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.**

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><p><strong>Stage Three: Bargaining<strong>

The individual attempts to compensate for what has happened, often by blaming his or herself or re-imagining the situation. _If __I __had __just __done __one __thing __differently__… _The individual may try to change what has happened by offering something in return for reversal. _It __would __be __better __if __I __had__ never __done __this; __things __will __get __better __if __I __leave__…_

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><p>A wide array of conceivable opening questions drift through Black Canary's mind as she eyes the hunched-over boy in front of her, and the one that she settles on is admittedly a bit inane, but it's a start.<p>

"How are you doing, Kaldur?" she murmurs softly, hands resting on her knee.

The stoic Atlantean boy nods silently to her, elbows on his knees, hands hanging astray. Black Canary fleetingly wonders if he must ever wish he could interlace his fingers, could entwine digits with another. The webbing between his fingers is pale and streaked with delicate blue veins.

"They are still…" He glances over his shoulder at the doorway leading into the kitchen and exhales, eyelids lowering. "Everyone is silent. We do not speak to one another of what happened, nor of anything else." He tilts his head downwards and mutters under his breath, "Everything has forever changed."

"I'm not asking about them, Kaldur," Black Canary tells him with a quirked smile. "I'm asking about you."

"Your concern touches me," he attempts to assure her, all limbs still. "It truly does. However, I am not who matters here. It is the others. They—"

"You matter as much as they do," Black Canary insists, leaning back in her chair. "Just because you're their leader doesn't mean you can't feel."

"Do not interpret my emotions incorrectly," Kaldur whispers, hands tightening. "I certainly feel. But it is not the time to feel. I must be there for my team."

"Kald—"

"For my friends," he finishes, and though his voice is low and raw, it is still more emphatic than Black Canary has heard it in quite a while.

Black Canary says nothing, trying to ignore the sour feeling in her chest. Kaldur's gills flutter without purpose, shiny and dark and cold-looking.

"In Atlantis," he begins, but then stops himself for revision. "In my home, the most honored and respected of all heroes, the most admired… were those who had sacrificed themselves in battle. I was trained to understand that dying for one's comrades was more acceptable and esteemed than anything else; it was… noble. I had always thought, _if__ I __must __die, __let __it __be __for __the __lives __of __many.__ Let __it __be__ for __others, __so __that __I__ may __be __remembered __as __a__ hero_."

He runs his nail-less fingers over each other, tracing the webbing between them pensively.

"I had not yet learned that this was not a common practice on the Surface. The people here are preoccupied only with self-sufficience, with individual livelihood. There is no collective, no sense of wholeness. I was supposed to stay alive, according to Batman, because _I_ was important. _I_ was the one who should have led this team. But I thought I had done what was good and right. I thought—"

Black Canary is startled by the fact that the previously calm waterfall behind her suddenly swells and burbles as Kaldur clenches his fists.

"If I had only attempted to understand the gravity of Surface battle traditions," he chokes out, "perhaps my Team would not have been so lost. But I had imagined that they would not grieve me, for one absent drop does not trouble the sea. The sea moves on, for it is _whole_, as Surface-dwellers can never be. And I feel as if I do not belong up here, where all things are so heavy and selfish."

He bows his head, and places a hand on his chest, about where his lungs would be.

"These bear such a cumbersome weight," he croaks. "They fill me with grief."

He curls in around the spot, shoulders surging forward, and closes his fingers into a fist.

"But it is a weight I must carry," he finishes with a forlorn sigh, and the fingers unravel, dropping down to dangle from his side. "If I am truly to remain on the Surface, as I have chosen, then…"

"Did you make that choice because you had to, or because you wanted to?" Black Canary asks gently. "I know that Batman can occasionally be… _coercive_ when it comes to leadership."

"He is not in the wrong," Kaldur tells her very sincerely. "It is I who… I made the decision to devote my time to the Surface because of…" He lowers his head, and Black Canary thinks that she might see tears glistening at the edges of his milky eyes. "I hope you will forgive me for not telling you."

Black Canary nods empathetically.

"You're not required to tell me anything, Kaldur," she reassures him, putting her chin in one hand as she regards him.

"Batman wants you to help us overcome our sorrows, is that correct?" Kaldur demands, almost bitterly. "If that is so, then we are indeed required to speak."

"Batman didn't make me do anything," Black Canary states, and it's the truth. "I volunteered. I care about you. All of you."

"I am certain that you do." Kaldur nods. "And I care for my Team very deeply, for we are what is whole and bottomless. We are together, in all things great or small. And yet, in the wake of devastation, I sacrificed myself for the betterment of the many. I had—"

He puts his head in his hands, and the webbing stretches out across his forehead like silk.

"It was selfish of me," he confesses, voice hoarse. Black Canary has the brief thought that he has been crying. "I had wanted to perish _nobly_. I had wanted my death to be as I had imagined when I was young. Heroic. Selfless. I had wanted to be remembered. And yet I was not. I was resented. My Team fell without me at their sides, and I wish so desperately that I could change that. If we fall, we fall as one. This is a lesson I have learned too late." He finally looks her in the eye, and Black Canary is not unnerved by the uncanny nacreous surface of his irises. "Do you understand?"

Black Canary resists the urge to lean forward and put her hand comfortingly on his shoulder.

"I do," she murmurs.

The waterfall quiets.

"I let them down," he admits, shoulders tightening infinitesimally in shame. "I was the general, but I behaved like a soldier and sacrificed myself. I am not fit for command—"

Black Canary's eyes widen. She is about to protest, but the sinking reminder that it is not her place silences her.

"—and must resign as Team leader." There is no wavering inflection in his voice, no hesitation or regret. His eyes are closed. He seems to be years older, face worn and covered in newly hewn lines. The resolution in his tone clenches her heart like a steel fist, but she reveals nothing of the sort.

"Who do you recommend to take your place?" she inquires calmly.

"Artemis is too raw and untrusting," Kaldur tells her, eyebrows touching in deep pensiveness. "Kid Flash, too rash and impulsive." (Black Canary tries not to snort and fails.) "Miss Martian remains… too eager to please. Superboy carries too much anger."

"Making Robin the logical choice," Black Canary finishes for him.

Kaldur's eyes widen, as if he feels a surge of terror at the conclusion he has just caused her to reach.

"He is so young." His voice is terribly despondent, perhaps even pitying.

"Kaldur," Black Canary whispers, and she leans forward. "You're _all_ young."

Kaldur exhales, and Black Canary has never heard breath sound so unnatural or forced.

"I cannot shift this burden to him," Kaldur concludes with nothing to indicate his regret but a flicker of grief that passes over his face like a wave. "Not yet. It appears I must withdraw my resignation."

"Kaldur," Black Canary says, and throws caution to the winds to place her hand on his shoulder, which is peculiarly cool and a little damp, though not from perspiration. It creeps up her fingertips and replenishes her. "Off the record. You are a valuable asset to this Team, and they all care about you very much, even though they don't show it. I know the surface isn't your true home, but you can try to make it a surrogate with this Team next to you. It's like you said, you're all part of something whole, and if one of you leaves, there's always going to be a part of it missing. Even the ocean can't replace some of the things it loses."

Kaldur nods slowly, eyes sliding to her hand on his shoulder. A trace of a smile, resigned and a bit sad, appears at the ends of his lips, and he closes his eyes, sighing.

"I will attempt to be there for them, as you will be," he says with a grateful nod. "And – off the record… thank you for taking care of my T—my friends."

Black Canary shrugs, smiling.

"Hey. That's what I'm here for. Once I'm done wiping the floor with you, you can all come crying to me for comfort."

Kaldur permits himself a breath of a chuckle, and Black Canary takes her hand off of his shoulder.

"You can go if you like."

He considers her offer before standing, inclining his head towards her in gratitude.

"Thank you for understanding," he maintains as he exits. "Thank you for… thank you."

She hears the door close behind him and reclines in the chair, letting out a long sigh to rejuvenate herself. Two hours and she's already not sure if she can keep going with this.

She glances at her sheet of names and her eyelids go low with anticipation as she puts it back in her pocket and strides to the door. She pulls it open, and the Team is still loitering out there, unmoving and silent. She disregards the unpleasant pressure in her gut at the sight of them.

"Robin, honey," she calls softly, and the Boy Wonder's head jerks up towards her, his sunglasses flashing. "Come on in."


	3. Robin

**Oh, Robin, darling. I have ruined you.**

**Sorry this one took so long! This boy's a tough little cookie and I _still_ failed to do him any justice. Sigh. Such is life when you're me. This one's a bit shorter than the other ones, but only by a few hundred words. I have no confidence in this chapter at all, ahaha. Let's see how many people give up on this story after this.  
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><p><strong>Stage Four: Depression<strong>

The individual may realize that bargaining is frivolous, and they are pulled into a state of depression at the knowledge that they can no longer escape what will happen. There are two types of depression, but they are not necessarily both felt. The first type of depression results in individual having regrets that haunt them; they criticize themselves and what they have done and are often "constantly reminded" of what has happened by mundane things. The individual may reconsider his or her personal choices, actions, or feelings. The second type is a sort of "private mourning," in which the individual quietly rebuilds his or herself by drawing away from family and friends and driving help away.

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><p>Robin looks amazingly small in the chair, Black Canary realizes with a twisting sensation in her heart. It is not the same lithe and quick and mischievous small that he ordinarily is – it is a frightened and ashamed small, one that hangs haggardly off of his jagged bones.<p>

His arms hang straight down between his open legs, pale fingers still. His head is bowed, and over the rim of his sunglasses, Canary thinks she can see black eyelashes, but they are curtained for the most part by his falling ebony hair, straggling helplessly down.

"Hi," he says meekly, so quietly that she isn't sure she's heard it until he looks at her.

"Hi," she reciprocates with warmth.

"What, um…" His voice is rendered a whisper by leftover rawness from recent tears, but he clears his throat and recovers some volume. "What am I… supposed to do in here, exactly?"

"Talk," she replies evenly. "If you want to, anyway."

Robin's eyes return to his knees. "Oh."

Black Canary crosses one leg and leans back contemplatively in the chair, cheek resting on her left knuckles.

"I know you had an especially hard time in the exercise," she says, hoping that she isn't grinding salt into the wound. "Having leadership shouldered onto you, being forced to send Superboy on a suicide mission…"

Robin curls in on himself silently and she relents.

"I had KF," he murmurs. "Me and him, we were—" He swallows. "I had KF."

"Robin," she speaks his name gently, "I know you're hurting, so… if you want to talk about it, that's what I'm here for."

"Hurting?" Robin echoes with quiet incredulity. "Try traumatized."

He pauses for a moment, inhaling, and Black Canary stays silent. Eventually, he manages to conjure up the words.

"I finally become leader and wind up sending all of my friends to their deaths. I – I know I did what I had to. But I hated it. When we started this team, I was _desperate_ to be in charge, but not anymore. And that's not even the worst of it."

He lifts his chin infinitesimally to lock gazes with her, eyebrows forlorn over his sunglasses.

"You…" He swallows. "You can't tell Batman."

"Nothing leaves this room," Black Canary assures him.

There is no hesitation in his expression; there is only resignation, self-deprecation, pale-cheeked bewilderment.

"I always… wanted – expected – to grow up, and – and _become_ him," he says, the words stumbling out with rapidity. "And the hero bit? I'm still all in! But that thing? Inside of him? The thing… that – that drives him to sacrifice _everything_ for the sake of his mission. That's not me. I don't wanna be _the_ Batman… anymore."

"No one ever asked you to be," Black Canary tells him softly. He smiles, but it is resigned and hollow.

"I asked myself to be. And in – in a way, I feel like I'm letting him down. I don't know _why_." He leans forward until his forehead is held in his propped-up hands, the fingers fist into his hair. He chuckles, but perhaps it's a bit more akin to a sob. "I mean, what does the Batman care about me? I'm just some dumb kid he picked up out of the gutter. I'm a charity case. I'm not – I'm nothing special."

"Don't say that," Black Canary implores him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Batman cares very much about you, even though he doesn't—"

"I used to think I was the most special kid in the world, actually," Robin cuts her off as if he hasn't heard her. "Little Richard, star of the Flying Graysons. Mom and Dad would make me feel like I could do _anything_. Nothing scared me." He inhales and lifts his head out of his hands, pulling his knees up to his chin and retreating against the back of the chair. "But I remember the night when the wires broke, and I watched them fall, and I was just – I was up at the platform, waiting for Dad to swing back and grab me, but he never came back. He never came back."

Black Canary's face feels as if it is splitting in half. Her eyebrows, sore with sorrowful empathy, are cracking over her eyes as she withdraws her hand from the stitch of his hoodie.

Robin has only ever spoken to her about his parents once, when he had been ten. Batman had told her that the boy had been having nightmares, and had suggested that her "flair for interrogating people" might benefit him. She never truly knew if it had, because Robin had not mentioned his family since.

"It was funny." She is dredged out of her introspective sadness by the Boy Wonder's crackling tone. "I mean, KF died right away, but I didn't. With M'gann around, I felt him go. But the ray didn't hit me; it hit the floor. The bomb went off, and the whole thing caved in. And suddenly I was falling. And I kept thinking, _I__'__m __a __failure. __Graysons __aren__'__t __supposed __to __fall. __Graysons __never __fall_."

Black Canary inhales through her nose to hold back the tears of a surrogate mother that seem to be an omnipresent threat as of late.

"I was scared," Robin croaks. "I was so scared."

He puts his hands on his upper arms and rubs them as if he is cold, resting his forehead on his raised knees.

"I just…" Robin's voice is small and empty in the vast tightness of the room. "All of my families – is it weird that we've all been teams? The Flying Graysons, Batman and Robin, the Junior Justice League or whatever we're called. How does that work? Who are you supposed to think about in battle? Your family or your team? How can you choose when they're the same thing? I keep telling myself, 'you sacrificed your _team_.' But I didn't, in the end; and…"

His sentence trails off into fretful quiet. In one sudden, swift movement, he reaches up and rips the sunglasses off of his face, causing Black Canary's eyes to widen.

"Robin…" she says.

"I'd sacrifice my team," he tells her. "I can accept that. But – not my family. Never my family. That's why I can't ever be Batman. I care too much. But I've already learned what it means to lose a family, and as long as I have this one – this _Team_, with a capital 't' – I'm not letting it go. I'm going to make mistakes in fights. I'm going to make stupid decisions because I want to keep them safe. But I don't care anymore."

His eyes are shockingly blue when they drill into hers, driving icicles into her heart. She pays them no mind.

"You talk about caring like it's a flaw," she muses, folding her arms. Robin thumps his foot a few times pensively.

"It might as well be," he murmurs. "Caring makes you screw everything up. Caring makes you die. I can't _care_. But – by the time I figured out that I _did_, it was already too late. KF had just… dissolved, like Artemis. We never saw what happened to Aqualad or Superboy, but we _felt_ it. It was like something… inside of us was suddenly _gone_. Not like it had been… physically taken out, or destroyed; it was just… gone. It was a gap."

He throws the sunglasses onto the floor with such force that they crack.

"I'm so sick of gaps."

"I don't suppose I need to tell you that this isn't your fault?" Black Canary asks calmly. Robin stills, eyes roving down to the floor.

"It was," he whispers.

"It wasn't, Robin." She shakes her head. "It wasn't."

"Then whose was it?" Robin demands bitterly, staring hatefully down at his hands, which clench around his knobbly knees. Black Canary sighs, drifting back in the chair, fingers interlacing as her stare wanders to the ceiling.

"No one's," she finally says, and she can tell by his surprised expression that he hadn't been expecting this answer. "Accidents happen, Robin. And in the context of the situation, you did what you had to do to protect the human race."

"But is it worth it?" he blurts out. "Is the human race even worth it? What would've happened if I'd managed to survive, huh? If it had been real? All of my friends would be dead. All of the Leaguers. I'd be alone."

"The needs of the many—" she begins with a wry smile, but suddenly freezes, seeing wet spots gathering at the edges of Robin's eyes. She leans forward, concerned. "Robin? Honey? What's wrong?"

"How do I tell them I'm sorry?" he croaks, hands still wrapped around his shoulders. "How do I even… _look_ at them? It would be a disaster."

Black Canary can't help the wry smile that curls over her mouth.

"Feel the aster then, Robin," she encourages him, and his head jerks up in astonishment. "I know that's what you do best."

After a few moments of bemused silence, he smiles, too. When he leaves later on, sunglasses on again (they are black curves over the earnest eyes that everyone should see), Black Canary finds herself standing and enveloping him in a hug, one that he reciprocates immediately, tightly, desperately.

"I'm here anytime you need me, okay?" she says earnestly. "Anytime Batman's being a creep. Anytime Wally's driving you crazy. Just – anytime, okay, Robin?"

He nods through her arms, wrestling away with a vague hint of the mischievous grin she knows so well, hiding in the crevices of his ashen face.

"I might take you up on that," he murmurs with a swelling undercurrent of gratitude before pushing open the door and calling, "M'gann, your turn!"

Black Canary can feel the palpable surface of the Martian girl's apprehensions before she even enters the room. She is so _tired_ as M'gann takes a cautious seat opposite her. So, so tired.


End file.
